John Joerger <[log in to unmask]> writes:
 
>WRQ technical support claims the problem is caused by the existance
>of an 8250 UART chip.  Running MSD (Microsoft Diagnostics) reports
>the computers having this chip.  However, the hardware guys claim
>that the serial I/O is intigrated into the mother board and no such
>chip exists in these PCs.
 
I've seen somewhere that MSD will report just about anything, including
the wrong kind of chip, if run from a DOS window (seems MSD sees the
windows COMM driver, not the actual chip itself).  If at all possible,
run MSD straight from the DOS prompt, or better still, try to find
another info-program (i.e. norton's sysinfo) to "get a second opinion".
 
>WRQ tech support says upgrade to UART 16550, but we don't have the
>ability to swap the chip.  Does that mean we then have some kind of
>config option to allow emulation of the various UARTs?  The only other
>option that has been suggested is to stop all other programs and
>reduce the baud rate to 2400 or 4800.  That is far from reasonable.
 
If indeed the chip is integrated at the board level, you won't be able
to swap it (these are usually integrated as surface mount QUIPS, not the
easiest thing to replace, even if it were pin-compatible)  Your best bet
along these lines is to go for the dedicated I/O board approach.  If you
don't need an "all-in-one" solution, you can sometimes find dedicated
high-speed serial I/O cards (two ports) for around $30.
 
Just swapping the board won't solve your problem in Windows, however.
You should also inform Windows that you are using enhanced chips.
The following lines were taken from my SYSTEM.INI file:
 
   [386Enh]
   ;notify WINDOWS of enhanced UART chips:
   com1fifo=1
   com2fifo=1
 
You could also investigate a "better COMM driver", one of which is
available here on Netcom.  (see MCStout's web homepage, useful utilities
link, CYBERCOM to be specific)  Appearhently, this turns on the OUTGOING
14-byte buffer (the comnfifo setting only turns on the incoming buffer,
which is usually enough in most cases)
 
Personally, I think Windows may be more of the problem than the solution
-- I remember being able to run Reflection in DOS on a turbo-XT (10
whole Mhz!) and "hot-keying" it into the background for a long file
transfer at 19200 and being able to work in lotus or word without any
problems.
 
Tom Emerson
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